"My mother told me that Abuela Celia was an atheist before I even understood what the word meant. I liked the sound of it, the derision with which my mother pronounced it, and knew immediately it was what I wanted to become. I don't know exactly when I stopped believing in God. It wasn't as deliberate as deciding, at age six, to become an atheist, but more like an imperceptible sloughing of layers. One day I noticed there was no more skin to absently peel, just air where there'd been artifice."
--Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

People always tell you to be honest with them but they are lying. No one wants that. Honesty sucks. That's why it is always preceded by words like 'brutal' or 'painful'
Everyone seems to hide the truth somehow
Maybe everyone has a reason to hide the truth. Honesty creates more problems than it solves, sometimes it can even kill. That's why people are afraid of the truth
-from Fearless By Francine Pascal

“I am an invisible man... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
-from the invisible man by Ralph Ellison

There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why-- when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.

-Kate Chopin from The Awakening

And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the piece on the right hand side. It was called "Perfectly Contented." I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but the same flowing rhythm and turned out to be quite easy. "Pleading Child" was shorter but slower, "Perfectly Contented" was longer and faster. And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song. -Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club

I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable. Because, even as a young child, I could sense the unspoken terrors that surrounded our house, the ones that chased my mother until she hid in a dark corner of her mind. And still they found her, I watched, over the years, as they devoured her, piece by piece, until she disappeared and became a ghost. -Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club

"Though here at journey's end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell."
-Sam, The Return of the King

"I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. I must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to given them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."
-Frodo, The Return of the King

"I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death."
"Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends."
-Frodo and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

"I wish none of this had happened."
"So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
-Frodo and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

"Oh, nowadays so many conceited peole go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad. Besides, there is this to be said. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
-Lord Darlington from Lady Wyndermere's Fan By Oscar Wilde

There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk 'his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' on an outcome dubious.
-Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
-J.R.R Tolkein The Lord of the RIngs trilogy

"God creates dinosaurs; God destroys dinosaurs; God creates man; Man destroys God; Man creates dinosaurs."
--Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over
me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to its
path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain
--Frank Herbert Dune

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
-- Anne Frank, diary entry (1944)

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
~ William Faulkner (1955 seminar and speeches in Japan), Tokyo: Kenkyusha (1956). Faulkner at Nagano

"When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
- Lewis Carroll, "Alice In Wonderland"

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost (1951)